The Shareslake network decentralization has started
The past Thursday, December 8th, 2022 community pools started to mint blocks in the Shareslake network.
The Shareslake network is a Cardano-based network for enhancing the adoption of blockchain by those people who are skeptical, mainly due to the volatility. Thus, it is a blockchain network powered by a fiat-backed stablecoin, running fully isolated from volatility and allowing people to stake their USD.
The vision of the Shareslake team is to bring all the blockchain advantages to conservative people, who still remain skeptical to use blockchain technology because they are volatility averse. This is really useful when tokenizing real-world assets because the people who usually hold them are not interested in getting extra exposure to volatility. Thus, using a network that inherently works powered by a stablecoin is the way to go. In short, bringing blockchain technology just like if you were using U.S. dollars.
Yesterday, the decentralization of the Shareslake network started, allowing community pools to start minting blocks. To date, all the blocks were minted by Shareslake nodes, starting yesterday 10% of the blocks are minted by the community stake pools, and it will be increasing with time until reaching 100% for a full decentralization of the block production.
The rewards obtained by the community pools are in the form of RUSD (the Shareslake stablecoin) and they come purely from transaction fees. Due to the nature of being powered by a fiat-backed stablecoin an economical expansion as it happens in the Cardano mainnet is not possible. We expect the rewards to be growing with adoption, as more transaction fees will be collected, distributing more rewards over the community pools.
Finally, if you would like to deploy a pool we have a step-by-step guide that also contains scripts to semi-automatically deploy the pool. We strongly recommend joining our stake pool discord channel.
Shareslake Status Updates
Every Sunday we publish a status update describing the work that was done during the week. Come here every Week to be informed about what we did or which are our next steps.
12/05/2022
It has been some time since the last update, so we will try to shorten everything that happened during the past 3 weeks.
News
We got our registration as Money Service Bussiness (MSB) with FinCEN finished.
We assisted at the Cardano Summit 2022 on the main stage in Laussane.
The decentralization of the Shareslake sidechain is ready to start and will start on December 9th, allowing community pools to mint blocks and earn rewards for them and their delegators.
During Cardano epoch 326 the volume of RUSD was really close to 1 million, which indicates a really good growth in people and usage.
General
We published a short video explaining everything we are doing and the project vision: https://youtu.be/OcKcj1uHI6s
We participated in several Twitter spaces to spread what we do around the Cardano community.
Technical
We released a new version of the bridge to move assets between Cardano and Shareslake.
The next steps are to allow unlimited redemptions of RUSD, which will help the peg to be organically maintained by arbitrage, as well as finishing our partnerships with European EMI/banks in order to improve the user experience for issuance and redemption of RUSD.
11/13/2022
At the end of the next week we will be in Lausanne for the Cardano Summit!
News
The new website is live! Including a new transparency section.
The Redeemable ticker was renamed from $RED to $RUSD
Some changes were announced regarding the whitepaper and roadmap. Check them here.
General
We hosted a Twitter space with FluidTokens
We contacted and had talks with other projects trying to increase the Redeemable utility in Cardano mainnet.
11/06/2022
News
Redeemable will be supported by FluidTokens to lend and borrow RED using NFTs as collateral.
General
We have been working on the new website
We had meetings with funds
We took the time to deeply think again on Redeemable. We are deciding if leaving Redeemable as 1:1 with the USD forever and creating the living costs pegged token as a separated one is the right decision, taking into account what the Cardano community wants.
10/30/2022
News
The Redeemable re-pegged organically in Cardano mainnet DEXes.
We supported fiat deposits to mint Redeemable in Cardano
General
We designed a new website with a better structure and we are working on it.
We hosted a break-out room with the European Cardano Community.
We are working on a new partnership that will be announced soon
10/23/2022
During this week we dedicated a lot of time to bureaucracy, but still, we worked on the following points:
News
Redemptions are enabled in the dashboard! You can now Redeem your RED. to avoid draining the liquidity, by the moment they are limited to the previously minted amount.
We joined a conversation about MiCa in the European Cardano Community space. Nest Thursday 27th we have been invited to the Town Hall.
We created some videos to add to the website and to share in the Cardano Summit post communications.
We started to work on a new design for the website to improve the communication of our mission.
Technical
Updated BFT nodes' KEY keys
Created redemption workflows in the dashboard.
Remember the voting for the Cardano Summit mainstage speakers finished on October 24th. Help us by voting for Shareslake under the stablecoin category!
10/16/2022
News
We were shortlisted to talk at the Cardano Summit
The reserve now supports ADA deposits
Redeemable can now be minted directly in Cardano
Muesliswap verification finished
General
We worked on enabling redemptions. The feature will be released next week.
Some changes on the website
We achieved all the goals we planned for the week and focused on understanding how to attract more people. We found a way of enabling redemptions without harming the initial liquidity bootstrapping. We will be enabling redemptions during the next week and continue focused on catching more Redeemable users.
10/09/2022
News
New Wingriders pool to swap Redeemable
Muesliswap listing in progress
General
Preparing the bridge UI to appear on dApp browsers.
Talking with other Cardano projects to reach partnerships.
Meeting some investors and financial companies.
We submited an article to essentialcardano (publishing pending, under review).
This week has been more focused on talking with people, learning what Cardano community want and thinking how to improve Redeemable liquidity and trust.
The goals for the next week are to allow crypto payments, at least with ADA on the dashboard, and allow to mint Redeemable directly on the Cardano network. We will also continue talking with other projects and working to increase people trust in our stablecoin.
10/02/2022
We became the first ever Cardano stablecoin!
News
The bridge was released, making Redeemable the first ever Cardano stablecoin!
Our first AMA session was great
General
Released the bridge and it is running smoothly and without issues.
Created a pool to exchange Redeemable in the Cardano network, Minswap
Applied for Coin Market Cap listing
Had some talks with possible investors
Contacted other projects looking for partnerships to increase RED volume and usability in Cardano
Organized and run an AMA to answer community member's questions
Technical
Moved the bridge infrastructure into production which was a big task.
Updated the websites, docs, and information to reflect the new release.
During the next week, we will continue putting effort into increasing Redeemable circulation and adoption. Listing the bridge in Dapp browsers, improving the UX for getting Redeemable directly from the dashboard, and continue sharing information about how Redeemable works.
09/25/2022
Everything is ready to bring the first Cardano stablecoin to Cardano mainnet!
News
The beta version of our bridge is ready to be published.
General
We finished all the bridge details. Finally, on Monday 26th we will be releasing the bridge, taking Redeemable to Cardano as the first "stablecoin".
We prepared the bridge release:
We wrote a blog post
We created bridge docs
We did a minor refactor on the website to include bridge information
We created a new logo for Redeemable
Technical
Updated the Shareslake network nodes (those owned by us) to node version 1.35.3
Updated all the infrastructure components to support node version 1.35.3
Deployed the bridge production infrastructure
Registered the bridge metadata into the Cardano metadata registry.
Registered new Redeemable token in the Cardano token registry.
During the next week, once the Cardano nodes and db-sync finish sync, we will be opening the bridge to the public, bringing to Cardano the first "stablecoin".
09/18/2022
During this week we focused on finishing all the bridge aspects so we can open it the next week. The opening of the Shareslake bridge is a really important step in our development because it could bring to Cardano ecosystem not only the first ever backed "stablecoin" but all the Redeemable features.
If you still do not know why Redeemable is better than a simple stablecoin, check out this other article.
General
We did progress on the MSB registration to allow U.S. people to interact with reserves.
Technical
We started and finished the bridge UI.
We started the bridge infrastructure deployment for production.
We fixed some errors with the rollback monitor.
During the next week, we expect to open the bridge to the public if everything goes as expected.
09/11/2022
General
We did a step forward on supporting crypto payments on the Dashboard by talking and sending the required information to an off-ramp service that will allow people to pay with crypto while the reserves will be filled with USD.
We progressed with the reserve custodian (a US bank) and we are in talks to start the due diligence process.
We had a meeting and started a relationship with the biggest exchange in Spain.
Technical
We highly increased the bridge processing speed by implementing parallelization and pipelining of UTxOs. We had to re-write such a feature 3 times so we did not have time to start with the UI, which we will start next week.
We built the node version 1.35.3 and all related components, updated tooling, container images, and documentation.
We created a solution to receive ledger rollback notifications that integrate with Cardano DB Sync.
09/04/2022
General
We decreased the Dashboard fees to the minimum possible to increase Redeemable circulation.
We have been looking for more wallets to support the Shareslake network.
We have been evaluating the addition of crypto payments to the dashboard through a third-party off-ramp system.
Technical
We continued working on the bridge. We refactored the whole code and tested it connected to the dev-nets. It is already functional and we plan to start with the UI during the next week.
During the next week, we plan to publish the binaries for nodes version 1.35.3 and associated tooling. We will continue with the bridge, with luck we will start with the UI.
08/28/2022
News
The Shareslake Dashboard was added to Eternl Dapp browser, allowing people to use it from mobile devices.
We published a Medium post talking about Shareslake and Redeemable. It is also available on the blog.
Technical
Implemented support for Cardano Dapp Connector bridge on the dashboard.
Automated bridge testing infrastructure to deploy and delete Cardano and Shareslake dev-nets on the fly, DB-sync, PostgreSQL, submit API, the bridge itself, and generate testing transactions.
Bridge debugging. We found several issues on the new version testing with the devnets and we are working to solve them.
During the next week, we will continue working on the bridge. We consider the Cardano bridge as a pillar in Redeemable adoption. We will also start to put extra effort into increasing Redeemable circulation, starting with a significant reduction in dashboard fees.
08/21/2022
News
The dashboard was released. Through it, people can interact with the reserves to obtain Reedemable and soon to redeem USD.
We established contact with an exchange to start working on general listing requirements.
Technical
As part of the dashboard release, we monitored its working in production and worked on the following related stuff:
Implement passport identity verification. It was initially released only with national ID but we noticed a high interest in using passports.
Implemented a new payment method with lower processing fees. Initially, we only supported credit cards, that incur high processing fees for users. We implemented a "Payment Request" method, which allows cheaper ACH and wire transfers.
Other minor fixes and improvements attending to users' feedback.
We created scripts to deploy dev-nets for each network the new bridge will support. We will start with Cardano <-> Shareslake and will continue adding new networks later.
We configured other general stuff such as website analytics, email configuration to avoid being considered spam, etc.
It was a great week with plenty of work done. During the next one, we plan to add the Dapp connector bridge to the dashboard so it can be listed in wallets browsers, continue working on the new bridge version, work on attracting more people to the Shareslake ecosystem (we are especially looking for SPOs), clarify website information, improve our documentation, ...
08/14/2022
General
We are about to publish the dashboard during the next week
Technical
We implemented a new payment method in the dashboard with lower processing fees.
We prepared the dashboard for the publication
We deployed the required infrastructure to publish the dashboard
Since we focused on the dashboard publication we had no time to work on the bridge. The dashboard is required to acquire Redeemable, thus it is currently the most important part. During the next week, we will be publishing the dashboard and overseeing its work.
Reviewed the dashboard fulfillment of the AML program and transaction monitoring requirements.
Implemented extra testing of the dashboard
We did not have time to automate the dev-nets we require for the bridge testing so we will start with that during the next week. Also, we will check the possibility of publishing the dashboard limiting the transaction amounts to avoid breaking regulations.
07/31/2022
General
A new blog post about Shareslake's multi-chain bridge was published.
We had meetings with some US banks.
We created a new presentation deck for banks and investors.
We reviewed the written AML program
Technical
We finished building the bridge for Cardano <-> Shareslake and will start to implement testing the next week.
We fixed a network issue with KES keys renovations.
During the next week, we will start to review the dashboard's implementation to ensure it follows the AML program, we will start to implement tests for the bridge and dashboard including development networks and we will continue working on the legal side.
07/24/2022
Technical
We continued working on the 2-way bridge:
We deployed the extra infrastructure necessary to index the ledger and submit transactions from a remote process.
We finished the code to react to events in the bridge for both Cardano and Shareslake and reflect them in the opposite network.
General
We are working with our attorneys towards the proper setup of the reserve.
During the next week, we have some meetings scheduled with banks, we will continue working with our attorneys to set up the reserve and we will continue the bridge development.
07/17/2022
We spent the week mostly continue working on the bridge.
Technical
We added a new feature to the Cardano address monitor to configure the address and k from another table.
We continued working on building the 2-way bridge between Cardano and Shareslake.
General
We signed with a law firm to help us with the legal part of creating the Redeemable reserve.
During the next week, we will continue with the development and talk with attorneys about how to properly release the dashboard. Also, we will continue looking for a custodian for the Redeemable reserve.
07/10/2022
During this week we have started to work on a new two-way bridge to allow the movement of Redeemable between Cardano and Shareslake. This will ship the Redeemable benefits to the Cardano ecosystem and will allow the interoperability of both networks.
Technical
We started the design of the new bridge
We created a proof of concept for an address monitor that runs along with cardano-db-sync and sends events with new transactions.
We released binaries for all the components supporting Vasil hard fork (node version 1.35.0).
We continued talking with attorneys and banks for opening the reserve to the public as soon as possible.
07/03/2022
This week was focused on looking for the reserve custodian.
Technical
We started to design the new version of the bridge.
General
We contacted and had some meetings with banks and banking services providers to find the custodian of the Redeemable reserve.
Finding the proper custodian for the reserve is getting more time than expected. In the meantime we will be working on the second version of the bridge, that will allow sending assets in both directions.
06/26/2022
Great things happened during this week!
News
Three new pools from the community joined the network. One of them is the BLADE pool, a top 10 Cardano stake pool.
IOG published the video containing our Interview at Barcelona Certification Meetup.
Technical
We deployed a new monitoring infrastructure and created new dashboards gathering and plotting metrics from the network nodes.
We set up the dashboard production configuration.
General
We wrote the AML program, there are just some details left to finish it, and submitted some of the required government forms. We continue working towards our MSB registration.
We wrote terms and conditions and the privacy policy of the dashboard platform.
We contacted several financial institutions for custody of the treasury.
During the upcoming week, we will continue working through our MSB registration and looking for partners for reserve custody. The dashboard is ready to be published and more and more people are asking about how to obtain Redeemable. We will be trying to find a way of allowing the acquisition of Redeemable even before the treasury is set up under third-party custody, we already have one possibility but incurs many fees for the users that we would like to avoid.
06/19/2022
During this week the version of Eternl wallet supporting Shareslake was released. Those users who have Redeemable can now easily create transactions using Eternl.
General
The dashboard KYC integration was finished. The dashboard is now ready to be published and will be released after clarifying some legal aspects.
We continue working on the legal part.
The team took some disconnection time and will come back to work as usual next week.
During the next week, we will work on some infrastructure improvement tasks such as improving monitoring and login stacks, will configure the dashboard production deployment, and will continue with legal requirements such as AML programs.
06/12/2022
During this week we have focused on continuing with the dashboard creation and legal stuff. The dashboard is almost ready, and once we obtain some information we will be able to publish it.
General
Continue with legal paperwork.
Cardano Cube announced our listing.
Technical
We were able to test Eternl wallet working with the Shareslake network for the first time.
We worked hard on finishing the first version of the dashboard to acquire Redeemable and redeem them for USD dollars.
During the next week, there is some planned disconnection time for the team, so we expect to publish the first version of the dashboard within two weeks.
06/05/2022
During this week we focused on legal requirements and bureaucracy as well as building the dashboard to interact with the reserves and publishing the information about the refactorization.
General
New documents were published/updated.
The website's content was updated to reflect the recent refactorization.
Technical
We started to build the dashboard to interact with the reserves. We create a simple UI, integrated KYC, and payments.
During the next week, we will continue working on the dashboard so people can continue acquiring Redeemable as soon as possible through the new platform. We will also start to create the required processes for AML.
05/29/2022
This week has been focused on preparing the refactorization of the Redeemable coin. It will become a fully collateralized coin that will preserve the purchasing power of people over time. Below are the most important points we have been working on during the week.
Technical
Protocol parameters upgraded to use 4 decimals instead of 6.
As part of the refactor we integrated KYC into the website. Will be published along with the rest of the changes.
As part of the refactor we are supporting the acquisition of coins through our website directly.
We continue working with Eternl to support our network into its wallet, previously called ccvault.
General
Setting up legal stuff.
Preparing new documents describing the changes.
During the next week, the website will suffer a refactorization of its content and the new documents about the Redeemable will be published.
05/22/2022
News
We are working with Eternl wallet to support our network
We stopped the coin sale. We are refactoring the coin economy to reduce volatility and improve its usability.
Technical
As part of the refactorization, we are moving to reserve all the funds, except the ones bought in the coin sale, that can be transferred from Cardano mainnet to Shareslake through our bridge.
We updated the Tau parameter to move the funds to the treasury and then to the reserve.
Preparing a protocol parameters update that will take place during the next week. It will imply changes to use 4 decimals instead of 6.
We will be performing major changes in our whitepaper during the next week.
05/15/2022
News
We will be in Barcelona next week at the IOG Meetup
Technical
A new version of our whitepaper has been published. We remove coverage of network fees on the exchange. The reasoning was that for an investor it is insignificant while it would have a high negative impact on the funds to be distributed as incentives to the companies.
We did some network maintenance and it reached protocol version 6.
We submitted a CIP to standardize wallet-backend communication. We also continue looking to adapt existing wallets to work with our network.
General
We spent some time preparing the next week's presentation since we consider it a good place to get feedback and visibility.
05/08/2022
News
Our network reached the Alonzo era. Welcome smart contracts!
You can now move your Redeemable from Cardano to Shareslake through an automatic bridge.
Worked on adapting existing Cardano wallets to work in Shareslake. We will be submitting a CIP for standardizing wallets and backed communications.
General
We set up a new small PR campaign about the network release.
We continued exploring exchange listing options.
05/01/2022
News
Mainnet is released and ready to accept new nodes! We will be creating some posts about it during the next week. Join our Discord to receive all the updates.
A new developer joined us!! He will be helping on building the platform for companies at the beginning.
General
We extended the pre-sale, as getting coins is needed for using the network.
We are setting a way for sending our Cardano mainnet token to the Shareslake mainnet.
04/24/2022
News
Project Catalyst voting started, don't forget to support us by voting.
We will be finishing stuff and preparing our network release during the next week.
Technical
Network bugs fixed.
We continue developing some smart contracts and a dApp POC.
General
We run a one-week marketing campaign that brought some extra sales to the pre-sale.
We are making progress in making ourselves known in the Cardano ecosystem.
03/11/2022
Destacable News
The Shareslake Network is running smoothly under testing. It will be officially published around March 18th.
Technical
We focused on network deployment and updates.
We moved the infrastructure to bigger servers supporting the increase in traffic.
A human error lead our pre-sale to stop processing transactions and we spent a day recovering data and services. At the time of writing this, our nodes are syncing with the Cardano mainnet and all the missed transactions will be processed in order once they finish the sync.
General
We are still looking for a new team member. Contact us if you are interested.
We continue working on community growth.
03/04/2022
Destacable News
The Shareslake Network will be released much sooner than expected.
We have a new channel on our discord to support the first stake pool operators.
Technical
We started the deployment of our network.
We started the development of a system for buying tokens with a credit card.
We migrated the website to a bigger server.
General
We started the hiring of a new team member.
We worked on community growth.
We updated the roadmap.
02/25/2022
Destacable News
The sales increased exponentially compared to the past week.
Our coin received an initial valuation of 4 million ADA regarding the prices of the transactions in swap platforms.
Technical
We created a development network that is being used internally by the team.
We defended 2 DoS attacks and implemented DoS mitigation tactics on our website (don't worry, nothing was compromised).
General
We continued working on PR and marketing campaigns.
We worked with a designer for creating great creative images and banners.
